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A bridge is a sticky connector only if people need to get to the other side (( Leszczynski, Janusz. “Alexandria Bridge.” Janusz L’s Photostream. 28 Aug 2009. Flickr, Web. 23 Nov 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/januszbc/3865004558/>. )) |
It appears to have started with a Facebook status update from Science Leadership Academy Principal, Chris Lehmann.
When having audience is no longer novel, simply having one is no longer motivating. We still must help kids have something powerful to say.
Saskatchewan educator, Dean Shareski, continues the point in a blog post, Why Audience Matters, followed by fellow Canadian (Snow Lake, Manitoba), Clarence Fisher in his post, Those Formerly Known as the Audience. Finally, it all came to my attention, when Jeff Utecht tweeted a link to his installment on the conversation, Audience as Community. I strongly recommend you read all three of these blog posts because, together, they cover a wide range of reasons why audience is important to student learners.
My immediate response to the whole issue was a mild disagreement with Chris’ initial post. He may be right, and he’s certainly in a better position than me to see it first hand. But I’ve had numerous Class Blogmeister teachers say that “classroom” as audience seems to be just about as motivating as arranging for people around the world read and respond.
I suspect that the world-reach thrill of blogging might be novel and might wear off. But it occurs to me that the true power of working within an audience, as opposed to performing in front of an audience (writing to the teacher, what you thing the teacher wants to read), is the power of conversation. It’s knowing that somebody (even the guy in the next row) is reading what you are writing (not measuring it), and that the reader may respond to what you’ve written, pushing you to rethink and respond back.
It’s the potential of adding something valuable to somebody else’s thinking — the potential of becoming valuable.
I usually mention three qualities of personal learning networks when I do presentations on the subject — that PLNs are:
- Personal — They’re shape and function is completely up to the the ongoing needs of the learner.
- Both Spontaneous and Directed — Some learning experiences can result from careful cultivation of the network, and some simply happen because you are connected.
- Connective — The network of people and sources are held together not by wires, routers, and HTML links. It is a network of ideas.
It’s this last one, connectiveness, that I think may be pertinent to this conversation. There has to be something between the network nodes besides the concept of audience. There has to be something sticky there, something that helps, something that offers value, an intrinsic reason for the conversation. If you are connecting your class to another class in Scotland, then there needs to be something in the perspective or experience of those Scottish students that helps your students accomplish their goals, and it must be a goal that is more than academic or schoolie. It has to be a goal your students identify with — that they want to accomplish.
This network of ideas is one of my favorite aspects of personal learning networks. The people I am connected to are not part of my network because we look the same, speak the same native language, follow the same religous doctrine, or share identical cultural traits. We connect through our ideas, because what we do provokes us to share those ideas, and we all benefit. Even the photo that I include at the top of this post comes from a temporary PLN connection with Janusz Leszczynski, simple because he (she) once took a picture of a bridge and labeled it bridge and I, months later, was looking for a picture of a bridge to symbolize connection. The ideas were experienced at different times, but the ideas’ stickness lasted on.
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I quite like your reflections on the need for connectivity to make community from an “audience”, especially your observation “that the reader may respond to what you’ve written, pushing you to rethink and respond back.”
In a nutshell, I believe this is the crucial difference between merely having an audience (before which we perform) and having a community where we can belong: connectivity–the possibility of dialogue and not mere speaking/writing.
Thank you for your reflection.
J, I really like your nutshell. Because of the connectivity and the possibility of dialog (I’d use the term conversation), it stops being merely speaking/writing. It becomes writing, and reading, and thinking. Writing, reading, and thinking. It become a richer literacy experience.
The best part of this whole conversation for me is how it reminds me of just good blogging. An idea that is written is then remixed again and again and continues to make you think in different directions, where linking is the key to keep the conversation tied together. Ah…yes…the good old days of blogging before conversations got lost in the twittersphere.
Thanks for the conversation!
Yes! What can’t be said in 140 characters.
“But I’ve had numerous Class Blogmeister teachers say that “classroom” as audience seems to be just about as motivating as arranging for people around the world read and respond.”
Interesting as our teachers say the opposite that a global audience is considerably more motivating. That is one of the main reasons why a ClustrMaps is one of the first things they add to class and student blogs.
Thanks for connecting the 3 initial posts, David.
And let me nod my head up-n-down over one crucial point you make: “It’s the potential of adding something valuable to somebody else’s thinking — the potential of becoming valuable.”
For many of us who have become used to ‘audience’ on multiple scales (professionally at close and global range), we may be so far out on the limb to still recall what it was like for a student-learner or even a teacher who has been ‘in’ their classroom privately doing noble work well away from the ‘global’ potential of virtual networks.
That first step was raw. Unchartered. Without boundaries or certainty.
And as you said above, the “potential of becoming valuable” is all that mattered. One blog comment. One link. One anything that extended beyond the teacher who had assigned the project in the first place.
To “matter” / to be “valuable” is what we all want. And this is so rarely the currency of what is offered to student-learners in traditional classrooms. Yes, they are ranked, but rarely are they “valued” for their intellectual contributions and risks (beyond “atta-boys” and “we love kids” and all that jazz).
Whether ‘audience’ means something local or scalable makes little difference at the end of the day. It only has to matter to the one with a ‘voice.’ And I fear that something primal may be unintentionally lost if we splice the semantic of ‘conversations’ and ‘audiences’ into too many fragments or even 2 black-n-white opposites.
So, thank you for pushing on the conversation and for reminding us of the core of any relationship: “It’s the potential of adding something valuable to somebody else’s thinking — the potential of becoming valuable.”
This is true in love. It is also true in a classroom. And it is most certainly true of our extended Personal Learning Networks regardless of how long we’ve been out on this virtual limb.